


Magic In Your Bones

by Blue_Savannah



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-09 02:11:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17992874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Savannah/pseuds/Blue_Savannah
Summary: In which Sirius Black loves Lily Evans





	Magic In Your Bones

**Author's Note:**

> "Kiss someone who makes you feel their magic in their bones,  
> Who makes you wonder how someone who looks like witchcraft at midnight can taste so holy."
> 
> \- Nikita Gill

In your sixth year, you date an exchange student named Apolline for two months. She’s half-veela and stunning, with a waterfall of white-blonde hair and cheekbones sharp enough to slice through things. Looking at her head on is startling, in the same way that you feel a little dizzy after staring straight into the sun. 

_(You still aren’t used bright things, because you grew up in darkness, raised in a gigantic house that stank of grandeur and the musty remnants of ancient, unforgiveable curses. At James’ Quidditch games, you conjure up pieces of tinted glass to hover in front of your eyes and shield them from the glare. Sometimes you magick them to say things like,_ the ref’s a wanker, _or_ , eat shit slytherin _, and you laugh and laugh until Lily Evans punches you in the shoulder. Later, the bruises come in blue and delicate, spaced out near your scapula in the shape of her fingers …)_

Anyway, though. Apolline. You break it off right before Christmas break, and she retaliates by gutting open your left kneecap with her silver dagger. You try and mend it yourself, but you’ve always been better at spells that blast things apart in lieu of putting them back together — _go figure_ — and so you limp up to the hospital wing to become Madam Pomfrey’s latest problem. 

Remus and James come to visit you. Remus is convinced that combining muggle sciences with Arithmancy is going to change the state of the world, but so far all he’s managed to do is conjure up multidimensional pink soap bubbles that float around the room. You accidentally set one on fire when you sneeze too hard. James hands you a giant slab of Honeyduke’s chocolate, and asks for your opinion on seducing Lily (properly, this time).

You lie in your hospital bed with your knee steadily leaking pus and watch the floating pink bubbles. You used to think that you liked girls with darkness to them, because it was what you _knew_ , because they reminded you of your mother blasting holes in the family tapestry, and of your cousin Bellatrix, laughing maniacally while she made Muggles scream. You used to think that you were like them, because children nursed on diets of violence and bigotry go one of two ways, and you always thought you were doomed … 

But then you met Remus and James and … _Lily_ , and you realized that you’d actually been the other way all along. Yeah, there’s darkness to you, but there’s something else there too.

———-

You goof off in the Astronomy Tower instead of applying yourself to classes, but you still ace your O.W.L.S because you’re something of an expert in matters of the cosmos.

Wizards have bones made from calcium, iron running through the blood in their veins and nitrogen in their brains — meaning that they are basically just stars themselves with people names.

This is especially true of your family, anyway.

The fact that the Black family has a habit of naming their children after stars is just another one of the many weird things for which they are known, along with rampant instability, Dark Magic association, and a deeply unhealthy obsession with Pure Blood status. 

You are named after the Dog Star, the brightest star in the Canis Major constellation, and the irony is not lost on you. Your brother Regulus Arcturus Black bears the names of two stars: Regulus, the brightest star in the Leo constellation, and Arcturus, of the Bootes constellation. 

As much as you hate her, your cousin Bellatrix is well named. She derives her name from one of the shoulder stars in the constellation Orion, which literally translates to _female warrior_. (You think about the aptness of this later, much later, on the day that she faces you down in the Department of Mysteries, wild-haired, teeth bared, the _Avada Kedavra_ a snarl in the back of her throat ... )

On James’ first date with Lily, he comes back home the next morning glowing, incandescent. He tells you everything in excruciating detail, right down to the way her skin smelled (of violets), the dorm decor (glow-in-the-dark constellation stars), and the sounds she made when he kissed her.

Your chest is burning with a sensation you don’t want to identify, and you say something fucking stupid, some off-the-cuff sexual joke that makes James tackle you, but you don’t mean it.

You’re not really thinking about James or about James-and-Lily together. You’re just thinking about Lily, lying in her bed, staring up at the ceiling, at the cheap, plastic stars in the shape of the constellation for which you were named.

———-

You remember the first time you ever really notice her.

It is fifth year, and you and James are busy hexing Snivellus. You’ve just taken your Defense Against the Dark Arts exam; you’re down by the Great Lake. The spray of sun is diamantine on the surface of the water and a bunch of fellow fifth years are casually watching James wash out Snape’s mouth with _scourgify_. You’re laughing, cheering him on. You’ve never liked Snape. He’s the kind of son your mother would have been proud of, the kind of person who can’t wait to follow Voldemort, who grew up on pain and wants to inflict it upon other people. He’s representative of everything you left behind and everything you’re afraid of becoming.

You get in on the fun with an _impedimenta_ curse. 

And then Lily’s there. She’s there with her wand out, and the sun is a hot halo on her dark red hair, and her eyes are so, so green when she says, _leave him the fuck alone, Black_.

You never forget that. You never forget the way your name sounds in her mouth, how the sharp _ck_ sound flicks her tongue against her teeth, and how it makes you think about what she tastes like. 

Mostly though, you just like how fiercely loyal Lily is, and how she stands up for her friends — even when that friend is Snape, and to stand up for him means going up against three of the most popular guys in school.

People say that loyalty is your best trait, but somehow you know that Lily has a myriad good traits, and this is just one of many.

———-

You dream about her for the first time that night. In your dream, she’s wearing the black lace lingerie and combat boots you saw in the Muggle porno last week. When she sees you, she doesn’t say anything, just grasps your face and kisses you. All your overloaded nerves light up, making it feel less like a kiss and more of a moment of impact, like shattered glass or shrapnel should be floating around you in slow-motion.

Then your hands shift to her jaw as you kiss her back. She tastes less sweet than you imagined she would. She tastes metallic and cool, like a weapon before being fired. It drives you crazy. She brackets your mouth with her thumbs, pulls your lips apart and _bites_ down, canines sinking into your lower lip. 

Last week, McGonagall transfigured a rabbit into a hedgehog and it made a noise between a moan and a snarl; this is what comes of our mouth now. You press your body to Lily’s. You put one hand on the curve of her hip, and the other on the slope of her neck. Underneath your palm, her bones feel slim and fragile. Blood and breath thrash between the two of you.

You wake up sweaty and frantic and guilty and achingly hard.

———-

You never, _ever_ tell James, but sometimes you wonder whether Remus knows.

Once in the Great Hall, you watch James butter a piece of toast for Lily. She takes a bite, accidentally smearing her nose with butter. He licks it off, laughing, and she makes this adorable micro-expression that screams at the kind of deeply intimate subtext you can only get from lots of late nights spent talking and doing other things. 

You give so many damns that it actually hurts and you end up stabbing yourself in the hand with your fork. When you look up, Remus is staring at you. You ask _what, moony_ and make a stupid face at him, but he only says, _i don't know, you tell me, sirius_ in that solemn way of his. 

You’re lucky because just then, Gideon Prewett gets a Howler and the whole Hall is suddenly full of his grandmother’s voice, ranting furiously about his appallingly low N.E.W.T.S. James is sufficiently distracted. Just as you twist in your seat to look over at Gideon, you see Snivellus’s face down at the Slytherin table, squashed in between Malfoy and McNair. 

He’s staring at James’s hand curled loosely at Lily’s waist, and you know instinctively that his expression is mirrored on your face too, like you’re both wearing wounds inflicted by the same weapon.

You never, ever thought you’d feel anything like compassion for Snape but it’s there anyway, simmering just under your ribcage like heartburn.

———-

The worst part isn’t even having to see James with Lily all the time. The worst part is how you can never get away from your feelings, because James talks about Lily whenever he’s not with her.

You have to withstand hours of hearing about how wonderful, how perfect, how fucking beautiful she is — and it makes you sort of fall in love with her all over again, through the words of the man who loves her better, who loved her first. 

If you cut yourself up with _sectumsempra_ (and sometimes you wish you just would), you know what you’d find: Lily and James grown together like two vines in your heart ventricles. You tried to rip both of them out but you never could quite manage it, and all that’s left behind is the bloody viscera of _what ifs._

———-

In sixth year, Amycus Carrow hexes James so badly that he ends up in the hospital wing for a week, and you go after him.

You trick Amycus away from his Slytherin cronies, land a nice _petrificus totalus_ that fully immobilizes him, then you sneak him up to the Astronomy Tower under cover of the Invisibility Cloak.

It’s windy when you push him right to the very edge of the parapet. A stone creaks ominously under Amycus’s weight. The wind screams in your ears and feels raw on your chapped face. Five hundred feet below you, the world beckons in a muted watercolor smear of color. 

Amycus can’t do anything but mouth soundlessly, his pupils huge and distorted in his white face. 

“Hey,” you tell him, “You ever touch any of my friends again, this is how I’ll kill you. I imagine it’s a long way to fall.”

For good measure, you leave him up there for a couple hours until the spell wears off.

Of course, you never suspect in a million years that anyone in your inner circle would be the one to betray James. If loyalty to your friends has always been your best trait, maybe its always been your downfall too.

After you hear about James and Lily’s deaths, you hunt Peter down like the dog you are. You feel like the two of them kept you closely anchored to the best parts of your humanity; without them, you are adrift, more Animagus than ever. For you, there is no reality in which Voldemort could have ever gone after your friends that didn’t end with you throwing your body in front of him, brandishing your wand for battle, screaming, _lily, james, take harry and run — I’ll hold him off._

_(You learn later that that’s what actually happened. Except it was James, and not you, who tried to hold off Voldemort. It was James who got hit with the killing curse full in the face, and it was Lily who desperately threw her body in front of Harry, screaming, no, please he’s just a baby, have mercy, have mercy, no, no, please —_

_You weren’t there, but you hear them screaming still, whenever you try to sleep)._

When Peter gets away, you’re just standing in the middle of a streetful of terrified Muggles, and you’re laughing, you’re fucking _laughing_ , because the last thread of your sanity has snapped and you can’t believe this is your life now, you can’t even imagine how you could possibly continue to live without the two people you’d loved more than anything else in this world.

———-

Fifteen years later, you’re sitting with your godson at Grimmauld Place. Harry is absently brandishing a knife emblazoned with the Black family crest, digging the edges of it into the table. You can see the p of _toujours pur_ where it hits the light and refracts it.

“Sirius,” he asks, “Will you tell me about my parents? What were they like?”

You smile. You tell him about James, how he was the best friend anyone could ever ask for, how after your awful mother accused you of _maraudering around with your no-good friends_ that you adopted the moniker of _marauders_ as a badge of honor. You tell Harry about the tricks you used to play together, how James wasn’t just a friend to you, but a brother, realer and truer than Regulus.

“And my mother?” Harry asks. His eyes are so, so green in his face, and it makes you remember that day at the lake. You think of Lily with her green, green eyes and her fierce loyalty, and the way her mouth looked when she'd said _leave him the fuck alone, Black._

 _Pop_ goes the knife into the table.

You swallow. You can’t bear to even tarnish James’ memory with the way you felt about Lily, so you lie and tell their son, _where I loved James like a brother, I loved Lily like a sister_.

———-

On the day that you run after Harry into the Department of Mysteries, on the day that Bellatrix’s killing curse hits you square in the chest, you have one awful instant where you look at Harry’s agonized face, and you regret having to leave him.

But in the same second, you think about Lily and James, and the duet of their imagined voices echoes in your head, together always, inseparable even in death... 

_...padfoot, how we’ve missed you_.

You tell them back, you say, _see you soon_.

———-

When you are in fifth year, there is a moment after the lake incident where you happen to run into Lily walking up the castle by herself. She’s limping, her arms full of Charms books, and you ask, _what’s wrong?_

She mutters something indecipherable under her breath. Under her bright hair, her face is white with strain, freckles standing out darkly against the pallor. When you look down, you see her ankle bone protruding unnaturally through the blue-veined skin. You pick her up without asking, and the warm, sweet weight of her settles naturally in your arms. 

“Hey!” She makes a startled exhalation of air, but then you feel the tension go out of her body like a balloon pricked with a needle. “Thanks Black,” she says, and her voice is lower now, syrupy without being sweet. “Can you take me to the hospital wing?”

You carry her without question, up the sloping castle grounds. At your back, the sun is a cold, metallic disc and it limns Lily’s face in light. Your heart is beating up in your throat. Her face is so close to your face that you can make out individual eyelashes, and the slight clump of mascara just under her right eye. 

Her lips are right next to your lips. You could do it. You could alter the course of your life forever by pressing your mouth to hers, just to gauge her reaction. You wonder whether she’d lean into you like she’s doing now, or whether she’d turn away.

You could do it though, and the wanting buzzes dully in your skull, burns in the back of your throat, hot and strong and fiercer than Firewhisky.

You don’t, though.

Because James is the better man, by far.


End file.
